by John Burdett
31
Just because it’s dawn doesn’t mean I’m sober. My assisted meditation got a little off track toward five o’clock this morning and I started to develop this question for you, farang, which I’m having trouble getting out of my head. This hand-started universe of yours, this Big Bang—for Buddha’s sake, what kind of cosmology is that? Was the guy who invented it also responsible for the Virgin birth? And now there are strings attached. Did you know that according to Wikipedia (which is never wrong), the relationship of one string, in terms of mass, to one atom is roughly the same as the ratio of an apple to the sun? Frankly, I prefer the original Sanskrit.
Okay, I’m in my bathroom staring at the unshaven guy in the mirror and watching my image of him, which is really his image of me, getting fleshed out as memory floods back. I am becoming more recognizable to myself by the second. Did you ever observe that there are two quite different forms of waking up available to the human species? One when you’re happy, the other when you’re not; there’s no comparison, right? These days Guilt and Horror stand guard at my bedside every morning. Their karmic sources seem interchangeable: Pichai’s death can fill me with guilt or horror, depending on which demon happens to prevail. Similarly, the heroin: I can be crippled with guilt or crippled with horror, according to the way my mood is running. Right now, I can hardly move. I am transfixed by what has happened to the guy staring out at me from the glass, the very one who from time to time in his life has seemed really quite close to the full spiritual awakening promised by the Buddha. Not this morning. And the whole agony of the thing seems bound up with Tietsin’s blade wheel; I have never had to get to know myself so well before. The consequence is like waking in a shallow grave and having to shake off the clay before you can start work. I groan when I remember my duties today.
It seems I have to moderate a meeting between Vikorn and Zinna, who have been impatiently awaiting my return from Kathmandu so they can move forward with structuring a temporary partnership which will allow them to pool resources to buy forty million dollars’ worth of smack from Tietsin. There are a lot of points to cover. Vikorn has written some down for me, but I have issues of my own, the most basic being how to get the dough to Tietsin safely.
This is deep consigliere stuff, and not without a certain dignity of office. I imagine the chairman of the World Bank often has to tackle this kind of thing, though with less visible threat to his health. Vikorn conceded the venue, which will be Zinna’s army HQ, in return for naming me secretary to the board. Zinna is putting up with me because I seem to have a way with the supplier; that, at least, is the story Vikorn has sold to him. Anyway, I am the only one on the Thai national team who has actually met Tietsin, and now that Lek has spread the word about what a terrifying witch the Tibetan is, having more or less turned me into his zombie and slave, no one else is keen to step up for the position of lead negotiator to Free Tibet. On the downside, colleagues have started giving me strange looks; I have the feeling people are reluctant to find themselves alone with me. Sometimes I’m tempted to turn them all into frogs. (That was a joke, farang.)
No doubt bearing in mind Vikorn’s extravagance at the last summit meeting ten years ago—when, you will recall, my Colonel showed up with thirteen black helicopters, which he hired for the day from someone close to the government of Cambodia—Zinna, we are told, has pulled out all the stops today. So has Vikorn. His taste in spectacular military uniforms (even though he’s a cop) has often caused me to speculate that he might be a reincarnation of Field Marshal Göring. (But the dates are wrong: Göring took his cyanide on October 15, 1946, which is four months after Vikorn was born; however, occultism posits alternative ways to invest a body, using vile, black means to kick out the present occupant so you can take over the bivouac for the duration—sounds like Vikorn, doesn’t it?) Today he is sporting full colonel shoulder boards in gold on starched white, with gold braid, brass buttons, beautifully tooled leather belt, black boots brought to a shine a girl could use as a hand mirror, a terrific lowbrow white cap with shiny black visor, an ebony swagger stick, his summit-meeting solid-gold non-fake Rolex wristwatch with diamond insets, and Wayfarer wraparound sunglasses: he is the very model of a modern mafioso. When we get into the back of his Bentley, he hitches up his white pants so as not to lose the bayonet-sharp crease: yep, the boss is taking no prisoners today. As soon as we’re off he orders his driver to play “Flight of the Valkyries” on the sound system.
General Zinna’s HQ is about twenty miles out of town, but he starts to make himself felt at about half that distance. Army trucks full of soldiers in camouflage fatigues start appearing parked on the hard shoulders; then motorbike squads come close to our motorbike escort, like medieval louts looking for an off-course jousting match; then, about three miles from the army compound, tanks start to line the road, parked perpendicular to the turnpike with their guns raised ambiguously. Is this a gauntlet or a welcoming committee? Maybe Vikorn wasn’t expecting quite so many tanks; he frowns for a moment and tells the driver to turn up the Wagner. By the time we get to the threshold of army land proper, the tanks are lined up tread to caterpillar tread, producing a funnel-like effect which drives us like game into a net with shrieking Valkyries infesting the air.
And there he is! I have to say I feel a twinge of admiration, the way he has tried to imitate Vikorn’s theatrics, and done a not-bad job of it. He is standing in full army-general parade dress, with his shoulder boards, et cetera, all shined up, the thick rawhide band across his great chest, his men—hundreds of them—all at attention with eyes forward. He’s the little guy with power to spare waiting with the determined dignity of the short to welcome our own capo di tutti capi.
Vikorn, though, is a natural at this kind of thing. The effortless, slightly foppish way he gets out of his Bentley—just slightly limp-wristed here, to point up and impishly mock Zinna’s military correctness—then, just as the General is provoked into beaming and moving forward a couple of steps to greet his guest, Vikorn decides to have a girlish moment—Whoops, I forgot the champagne, his expression says—and instead of ordering his driver to get it he dips back into his limo himself to bring out what is surely a symbolic single bottle of Veuve Clicquot ’86 (there is more on ice in the trunk) while Zinna hangs there wondering what to do with the hands he just raised to his eyes in a wai.
“So our negotiations go all the more smoothly,” Vikorn says with a debonair smile as he hands over the bottle at the same time finally returning Zinna’s wai.
Sensing that he might have been upstaged, Zinna blushes as he takes the bottle; but it is clear he has built up an arms cache of extravagance to hit us with. Sure enough, once Vikorn has strolled nonchalantly through his inspection of the troops, with Zinna bouncing up and down beside him, the General declares it is time for lunch and takes us into his mess, where a banquet has been prepared. The banquet, though, is all for the supporting cast; under heavy police and military escort Zinna leads Vikorn and me to a smaller mess room for senior officers; only the three of us and Zinna’s valet, a trusted member of the inner circle who hails from Zinna’s own village, enter here.
Now Zinna demonstrates how he has grown in stature and grace over the years, because the feast consists of soul food from Vikorn’s home village in Isaan. A mere glimpse at the table tells me we are in for quite a treat: noodles, Mekong River catfish, grilled chicken, salads loaded with minced meat or fish, steamed fish with mint leaves, chilies, garlic, lemon-grass, lime juice, and galangal. Boneless duck tossed with deep-green long beans. Salt-cured crab, and crunchy pork skins. Num tok with rubbery beef balls, slices of pork, cuts of liver, and tripe, squid in gal kua. Green curry, eggplant, and basil leaves with pork (chicken, beef, or seafood is also available, but less appealing), in a sauce thickened with coconut milk. Red curry with cinnamon and chili. I have been told by Lek—who, since his ordeal at the hands of the army, has become the recipient of the most salacious military gossip (he claims one of his guilty tormentors
e-mailed him with an apology and an offer of marriage once he’s had the op, and they’ve been pen friends ever since)—that Zinna himself interviewed a short list of chefs to produce Vikorn’s extra-special favorite homebody version of somtam, which takes a full day to prepare and is not complete without a few blessings and spells from the local shaman.
My Colonel’s mien is grave but respectful as he bows his head for the first taste of the somtam, with Zinna himself holding his breath. Vikorn’s expression is all the more solemn when he replaces the fork and spoon, dabs his lips with a napkin, and declares, with an air of defeat, that the dish is perfect, very nearly as good as his grandmother made it. No, he will not bend the truth simply to score a point, he confesses, before the two of us, Zinna and me, that it is even better than his grandmother made it, no doubt thanks to the chef’s more delicate hand with the holy basil and the Kaffir lime leaf. Gratified, Zinna exhales slowly, and with considerable relief; how could they not reach an agreement now? Of the two of them, it is Zinna who most needs the money, and no one doubts it is Vikorn, the gilded civilian, who is the supreme patriarch of dough.
The rest of Vikorn’s champagne is brought from the back of the Bentley, along with its silver ice bucket. Zinna offers all known cocktails, spirits, beers, wines. We plunge into the Widow Clicquot in silence. Now soldier-waiters arrive with vegetable filo parcels, steamed crabs, chicken satay, Thai dim sum, pan-fried fishcakes, barbecued pork spare ribs, spring rolls, grilled seafood with pineapple, bean sprouts and tofu soup, quail-egg salad with prawns, red snapper with three-flavor sauce, turia with pork—I’m giving only the unusual dishes, farang; all the old favorites are represented as well.
I am floundering under the weight of the banquet, but those two old bull elephants seem able to pack it away without a stomach rumble. Finally, it’s over. Zinna has someone bring the cigars and the Armagnac for Vikorn, a single-malt whisky for himself, while I surreptitiously undo my belt a couple of notches. Suddenly, both men are looking to me for the next move. It dawns on me that some kind of unwritten protocol has forbidden either of them to speak first; indeed, the entire meal has passed without anyone saying a word since the somtam—not even “Please pass the nam pla.” Zinna coughs. Vikorn coughs too, staring—almost glaring—at me. I reflect to myself that one of the great bugbears of conferences of this nature is that nothing is written down—there are no minutes and no agenda—and on the last occasion we got into hostilities before the meeting opened, so there is no historical format to follow. To make matters worse, I don’t think either of them has any idea of the proper order of business. Somewhat dizzy, I stand up.
“Gentlemen,” I say, then decide to display full consigliere authority by pacing the flagstones a little. “This is a great historic occasion.” They nod encouragingly. “For too long has our great Buddhist country been divided between the military and civilian disciplined services. How can this be? Didn’t the Buddha himself favor commerce over war?” More encouraging nods from the old men, as if I were rehearsing for a school play. “And has not the whole of Asia benefited from a trade-friendly religion which has made our half of the world’s population into such gifted businessmen and -women?” I pause to glare with righteous indignation. “And is it not a fact that after three hundred years of global militarism, starting with Clive of India, which our people never wanted—is it not a fact that only now is the West beginning to awaken to the need for peace, a need which Buddhism has been explaining to anyone who would listen for two and a half millennia?”
I pause again, frowning like Beethoven. “You see, the essentially socio-pathic nature of modern corporations worldwide is easy to explain when one remembers it originated in the needs of professional opium traffickers, viz, the British East India Company under Clive. To see it as anything other than the expression of a criminal mind-set is catastrophically naïve. The long-term effect? The destiny of the world has been handed over to Gamblers Anonymous.”
Some cautious enthusiasm now, from the old guys.
“And if we ask ourselves how it came about that red-faced primitives from the far Northwest managed to dominate and militarize the whole world for more than three hundred years, there really is only one answer: opium. Millions upon millions of tons of it. They grew it in India and shipped it to China under armed escort until twenty million Chinese were addicted.”
I pause again because I’ve finally got the full attention of the two oldies, who have leaned forward in fascination. “By the nineteenth century the entire British Empire would have gone bankrupt without the narcotic. The French were similarly active in Indochina, the Dutch sold anything to anyone, the Germans tried to catch up, while the Americans stuck mostly to slavery. What do these countries all have in common? Only this: that through narcotics trafficking and trading in slaves they were able to invest in heavy industry that put them two hundred years ahead of the field, which has only now begun to catch up. But it’s a macroeconomic strategy that can only be achieved by a united nation. Gentlemen, for the sake of the global economy, peace, and the evolution of our species, you must join together today in this great venture of sale and purchase—if you do not, the Cambodians or the Vietnamese surely will.”
Well, I think that’s done the trick in terms of putting it all in historical perspective; at least it’s made me feel better about what I’m doing. Both men are now looking suitably self-righteous about the deal, with Well-I’m-not-going-to-be-the-first-to-break-the-contract looks on their hard old mugs.
I sit down again and adopt a less statesmanlike tone. “The structure is a little complicated, but it’s the best we can do on short notice. You both will agree to own equal shares in a trading company based in Lichtenstein. The trading company’s bankers over there—based in Zurich, of course—will send the paperwork, which your lawyers will check. If all is in order, you will sign before notaries on a date and time to be approved by your astrologers, but in not more than five days from receipt of the documents. For the sake of simplicity, the value of each share will be one million dollars. You each will buy twenty shares, and you will bear the administrative and other costs and disbursements equally. As soon as forty million dollars has been deposited in the trading company’s bank account, the bankers will issue an irrevocable letter of credit in that sum in favor of whatever person or vehicle the Tibetan specifies. The letter of credit will be held by a nominee whom you both trust. I will accept the responsibility if you wish to so honor me. In any case, the letter of credit will be brought to the site where the goods are to be tested. When chemists approved by yourselves have examined the product and found it to be ninety-nine percent grade four in the agreed quantity, the letter of credit will be handed over to the Tibetan or one of his nominees. Are we all agreed?”
32
How did the meeting end? Answer: I don’t know. Those two old pythons started knocking back the booze and reliving old battles as soon as I’d established substantial agreement on all terms of the proposed partnership and deal. Zinna had never owned a corporation before, so this was a brand-new ego adventure to get all puffed up about, and Vikorn had to gently dissuade him from designing the stationery; this wasn’t going to be the kind of operation where you do a lot of letter writing. Vikorn, of course, owned hundreds of corporations in various corruption-friendly locations around the world, but his sophistication did not extend to letters of credit—his were still mostly cash-only sales—and this new business tool also excited his ego: he was keen to try it out on his partners in Miami, who bought most of his yaa baa and liked to tease him about being a third-world ignoramus. So they got drunker and friendlier and after a while out came the jao paw’s favorite fantasy tool: the pocket calculator. If the Tibetan was on the level, their markup of the product on delivery to Europe or America would be 200 percent. Zinna saw an endless line of beautiful and cooperative young men visiting him in a six-star villa overlooking the Andaman Sea somewhere. Vikorn saw a massive global empire: he was not too old to go into something le
gal after the first five-year plan had leveraged his dough; maybe video games? In short, farang, both of them slipped amicably into that form of masturbation capitalism with which I am sure you are familiar, while I felt worse and worse. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the people we were going to poison, and how black my karma was going to be. When the two of them were too drunk to notice, I persuaded one of Zinna’s officers to find me a car to take me back to Krung Thep. He found a white Toyota limousine and a sergeant in fatigues to drive it. Then, just to honor his boss’s high spirits, he threw in a motorcycle escort as well. His intentions were good, but the effect was to increase my self-disgust. In fact, I was searching my mind to find something about myself that I still liked when my cell phone rang.
“Call me back, I don’t have any money,” a woman’s angry voice said in a UN accent.
The number on the log began with 977: Nepal. Not that there was any doubt about that. I called the number, and she let the phone ring for quite a while before she answered it.
In a hoarse, hard voice: “So, where the hell have you been?”
“Huh?”
“Thought you’d take advantage of a poor third-world girl while you had the chance, then just dump her like a Kleenex, didn’t you?” She managed to insert a great, self-pitying clot of bloody, low-grade emotion into her tone, which had me frowning at the telephone, not believing what I was hearing.